Guage

On Sun, 20 Jan 2008 11:12:34 +0000, Paul Boyd wrote

Steve Bell's cartoons capture that perfectly - "The trrrists in Yurp"

Last week he had Bush talking about Blair possibly becoming the "Presna Yurp"

No chance.

But in any case it's not like the American Presidency. It has no power and is more like being the chairman of a meeting, and it rotates through the different member countries. But Blair is thoroughly distrusted and thoroughly disliked in Europe.

American exporters I've dealt with seem to think "yew-rope" is all one country with a single set of laws and leave me to sort out the tax implications at this end.

(kim)

Having done it myself quite recently and understanding some of the pifalls, is there a particular reason you want to build your own PC?

(kim)

At least he gets the right number of sylables in nuclear / "nuc-u-lar"

I know what you mean. I've lived in the USA since 1989. They think the US way is the only way. Many even think the Queen rules the country.

Yanks don't have any problem with those...

Likewise squirl, prog-ress, Feb-u-ary, boo-ey, etc.

Just like the Brits, then (who think the British way is the only way).

As in "nucular terrrrsts from Eye-raq".

On Sun, 20 Jan 2008 13:14:47 +0000, Christopher A.Lee wrote

I can assure you he did. The cartoon was printed in The Guardian last week.

Not for long. There are moves afoot to make it an elected position with a 'several-year' term.

On Sun, 20 Jan 2008 16:31:33 +0000, MartinS wrote

*Some* Brits... *Some* of us would prefer the countries of the UK to be states of a federal United States Of Europe.

But in that case Blair certainly wouldn't get elected. He is either totally unaware just how much he is disliked, or doesn't care because he has God on his side which makes him right (his remark about consulting God before invading Iraq) - but that won't get him elected either.

On 20/01/2008 15:22, kim said,

Because I always have done :-) Actually, it's more like a sort of continual upgrade - this time round it's a change of motherboard, processor, memory and graphics which by my reckoning makes it "new". I already have a good case, PSU and SATA drives, so don't need to replace those. The only pitfall I've ever come across is having to phone Microsoft to activate XP when it decides I must be trying to pirate it because it's on a new mobo.

To be honest, even if I wanted a complete second PC I would probably still build it because I can, and I also get exactly what I need.

That's why I downloaded the "4XP" hack. It was far less hassle than balancing an old system case on my lap while trying to read the serial number on the back to a man in India while I typed a new number into the keyboard which turned out not to be the activation key anyway.

That's true but as you know 'quality' components are very expensive and even cheap ones work out far more expensive than buying a complete unit. I'd do it again but only for pleasure. If it was for business I'd just buy a well known corporate brand and have done with it.

(kim)

Hear hear. It's a hobby! The above just demonstates why, for sensible standards to be established, all markets need to be involved. As far as I can see from the web the NMRA never consulted with UK manufacturers or societies (no reason they should of course, being American), hence in most areas NMRA don't apply to the UK, and maybe Europe, as we have our own long-established de facto standards. At the end of the day the real question is: "Do you enjoy your hobby?" If that includes a Class 60 pulling pre-grouping wagons in a mixture of 00 amd H0, does it really matter? No, of course not.

Cheers Richard

Just turn off Flash and javascript - if a site doesn't work well without them (they should, *properly* designed sites should degrade gracefully down to text only) there is a very good chance it's going to be a naff site anyway! Plus your much more secure from nasty suprises with both turned off.

Having an old fashioned browser also helps - I went to log onto the bank a couple of weeks ago and slightly mis-typed the URL (I don't keep those sort of sites in favourites). I was taken to a phishing site, and very, very good it was too. Were my broswer not in the habit of rendering some tables slightly wrongly, I'd now be skint!

Cheers Richard

Is anything bungalowable?

Cheers Richard

Or, more likely, do-able (as it used to be written).

Cheers Richard

There are two language roots in Europe, those derrived from Latin (English, French, German, etc) and those derrived from Celtic/Gaelic [1] (Gaelic, Celtic, Flemmish, Basque, Welsh, etc). The Latin ones seem, very, very slowly, to be merging despite the best efforts of the French government ;-) whereas the others remain fiercely independent.

I can't remember where Norsk, Danish, etc come from, but I think it's the Gealic route.

Cheers Richard

[1]They've got a new name for these, but the little grey cells are still having their weekend.